7 Latest Website Design Trends to Boost Your Traffic

Regardless of the industry you work in, your website design is your chance to make a positive impression on your prospective clients. Aside from following the primary rules of website design and meeting web accessibility standards, you should also keep up with the latest website design trends.

We've compiled 7 of them to help keep your visitors hooked.

Introduction

Want to boost your website conversion rates by up to 400%? A great website design will do that. Furthermore, 94% of purchasers distrust poorly designed or outdated websites. One cannot overstate the importance of keeping up with current web design trends.

With that said, let's jump in.

The Latest Website Design Trends

Videos Used as Design Elements

Promotional videos and interviews – that is, informational videos – have been popular for a while. However, more recently, videos have shifted towards acting as design elements.

This means that videos can be incorporated into your website in creative, appealing ways. Tools such as VideoBox enable you to choose how to play your videos, whether on a loop, automatically, or in slow motion.

As with many elements, the use of video depends on the tone of your brand. It may not, for example, be suitable for a law firm's website, since there is a casual air to videos used as design elements.

Pastel or Black Color Schemes

If you want your business to give the impression of calmness and delicacy, consider incorporating pastels into your website design color scheme. Muted, delicate, and cool or cozy as per your choices, it's hard to go wrong with these colors.

Pastel websites are well suited to women's fashion businesses, bakeries, and brands that want to evoke fun and light-heartedness.

Black color schemes are another great website design trend. The general perception of dark websites is that they are elegant, luxurious and somber. Like pastel schemes, dark schemes are easy on the eyes. You can go minimalistic with a black and white scheme or add a splash of contrast with bright pops of color.

To overcome the strain on the eyes, the font size used in black websites should be 18px or above.

Black websites are especially suited to eCommerce websites, because the products will be in focus, or to websites without a lot of content.

Scroll Effects

A scroll effect or two can add a lot of interactive value to your website. Some effects include horizontal scrolling, zooming in and out of images, and implementing exciting, heady transitions between sections.

Parallax scrolling is one of the most popular effects. As a user scrolls through a more fast-paced foreground, the pace of the background is slowed. This results in a kind of thrilling 3D illusion.

With any scroll effect, your website will be anything but boring. However, since they can be tricky to implement, we do recommend that in this case you opt for professional web design services.

Augmented Reality (AR)

Augmented reality (AR) isn't limited to playing Pokémon GO on your phone anymore.

It is particularly useful if you have an eCommerce or retail website, since it enables buyers to explore products. In fact, 60% of customers say they would like to use AR when shopping for furniture.

This website design trend will make your website more memorable and help you stand out from the competition.

Gaussian Blur

A Gaussian blur, also called Gaussian smoothing, provides a whorl of soft focus to gradients and images. While the effect is not new, web designers have been using it more often in website designs.

The technique is named after mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. It is a kind of low-pass filter that smoothes uneven pixel values, and looks a bit like layering a translucent material on top of an image.

There is a time and place for Gaussian blurring. For example, when layering text over an image or muting noise in an image.

Collages

Quirky and creative – that's what your website will seem like if you use collages. Your web designer can apply various art styles to develop a collage that suits your brand.

Since collages can be tricky to get right, make sure your website development company knows what they're doing. Don't forget to check their portfolio and reviews!

Consider the following aspects when developing collage art for your website:

• Textures and Patterns: Patterns will create illusions and contrasts.

• Theme: Stick to one theme such as "summer" or "yesterday" to have a focus.

• Composition: Don't be timid. Be creative with techniques such as the rule of thirds and the one-point perspective.

Using Typography to Evoke Emotions

For a long time, fonts have been used to instill certain moods in readers. However, the power of fonts in terms of psychology has recently been even more realized. Fonts evoke certain psychological reactions in people, and the biggest brands take advantage of that.

For example, Sony and IBM use Slab Serif fonts for the feelings of strength and endurance they evoke.

Here are a few font types along with the emotions they evoke:

• Serif: stability, formality. Eg., Baskerville, Addington. Ideal for: News channels, law firms, fashion brands.

• Slab Serif: power, strength. Eg., Darius, Bw Glenn Slab. Ideal for: Electronics companies, car manufacturers.

• Sans Serif: informal, open. Eg., Modelica, Arial. Ideal for: High-street retailers, logistics businesses, and budget airlines.

On a similar note, emotive typography involves typographic designs that more directly connect psychological responses with words. For example, the word "sea" will evoke thoughts of water, so a design might use the color blue and waves or drops.

If you want to make your typography stand out, use a simple background and keep the number of words and letters to a minimum.

Conclusion

We hope that this article has inspired you to use some of the latest web design trends.

If you need someone to design and develop a website that matches your business' brand and purpose, BluEnt is a web design company that's just a click away. We've been operating since 2003 and are always on top of the latest website design trends. Take a look at how we've helped businesses like yours.

We serve Fortune companies, SMEs, consulting firms, and funded startups. If you want to boost your traffic with a modern website with great UX/UI, contact us now!

Maximum Value. Achieved.